The Radetzky March (14 page)

“He has to study diseases at their source!” said Captain Taittinger with scientific gravity, as pale and haggard as ever.

Ensign Bärenstein’s monocle was now on the eye of an ash-blond girl. He sat there with small, black, blinking eyes, his hairy brown hands creeping across her like bizarre animals. Little by little, everyone had taken a seat. On the red sofa, two girls, perching stiffly with drawn knees between the doctor and Carl Joseph, were intimidated by the despairing faces of these two men. When the champagne arrived—ceremoniously brought in by the strict housekeeper in black taffeta—Frau Horwath, for love of order, resolutely pulled the first lieutenant’s hand from her décolletage, placed it on his black trousers as if returning a borrowed object, and rose to her feet, mighty and imperious. She put out the chandelier. Only the small lamps were burning in the niches.

In the wan reddish twilight, the powdered white bodies shone, the gold stars glinted, the silver sabers shimmered. One couple after another stood up and vanished. Prohaska, having long since reached the brandy stage, approached the regimental surgeon and said, “You guys don’t really need them, I’ll take them along!” And he took both women and, between them, staggered off toward the stairs.

And so suddenly they were alone, Carl Joseph and the doctor. Pollak the pianist was now merely tickling the ivories in the
opposite corner of the parlor. A soulful waltz came wafting through the room, timid and wispy. Otherwise the house was silent, almost cozy, and the clock on the mantelpiece was ticking away.

“I don’t believe we two have anything to do here, do we?” asked the doctor. He stood up.

Carl Joseph checked the clock on the mantel and likewise rose to his feet. Unable to tell the time in the dark, he went over to the clock and then stepped back. In a bronze flyblown frame stood the Supreme Commander in Chief, a reduced version of the well-known ubiquitous portrait of His Majesty, in the sparkling white garb, with the blood-red sash and the Golden Fleece. Something has to be done, thought the lieutenant swiftly and childishly. Something has to be done! He sensed he had turned pale; his heart was pounding. He reached for the frame, opened the black paper backing, and removed the picture. He folded it, twice, once more, and slipped it into his pocket. He turned around. Behind him stood the regimental surgeon.

The doctor pointed his finger at the pocket where Carl Joseph had concealed the Emperor’s portrait. The grandfather rescued him too, thought Dr. Demant.

Carl Joseph reddened. “Disgusting!” he said. “What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” replied the doctor. “I was only thinking of your grandfather.”

“I am his grandson!” said Carl Joseph. “I have no chance to save his life—unfortunately!”

They placed four silver coins on the table and left the house of Frau Resi Horwath.

M
AX
D
EMANT, THE
regimental surgeon, had been with the regiment for three years now. He lived outside the town, at its southern edge, where the highway led to the two graveyards, the “old” one and the “new” one. Both cemetery keepers were well acquainted with the physician. He came by several times a week to visit the dead, both the long gone and the still unforgotten. He sometimes lingered on and on among their graves, and now and then his saber could be heard jangling softly as it struck against a headstone. He was undoubtedly a strange man: a good doctor, people said, and thus in every respect an oddity among army medics. He avoided any social contact. It was purely his official duties that compelled him to show his face among his fellow officers—only sporadically, but still more often than he would have liked. By age and seniority he should have made captain of a medical corps long since. No one knew why he had not. He may not have known why himself. “Some careers have snags.” That was one of the homilies of Rittmaster Taittinger, who always supplied the regiment with choice adages.

“A career with snags,” the doctor himself would often muse. “A life with snags,” he said to Lieutenant Trotta. “I have a life with snags. If fate had been kind to me, I could have become assistant to a great Viennese surgeon and then probably a professor.”

Early on, the great name of the Viennese surgeon had cast its glamour on the dark confines of Demant’s childhood. While still a boy, Max Demant had already made up his mind to be a physician. He came from one of the eastern border towns of the monarchy. His grandfather had been an orthodox Jewish tavern keeper, and his father, after twelve years in the militia, had
become a mid-level official at the post office of the nearest little border town. Demant could still remember his grandfather clearly. The old man used to sit at the huge arched entrance to his border tavern at all hours of the day. His enormous beard of crinkly silver concealed his chest and reached down to his knees. The smell of dung and milk and hay and horses floated about him. He sat outside, an old king among the tavern keepers. When the farmers, heading home from the weekly pig market, drew up at the tavern, the old man massively rose to his feet, like a mountain in human guise. Since he was hard of hearing by now, the small peasants had to cup their mouths and yell their orders at him. He merely nodded. He understood. He granted the wishes of his customers as if conferring favors rather than being paid in good hard coin. With powerful hands, he unharnessed their horses himself and led them to the stalls. And while his daughters served brandy and dry salted peas to the patrons in the wide, low taproom, he would fodder the horses with soothing words. On Saturdays he sat hunched over huge pious tomes. His silvery beard covered the lower half of the black-printed page. Had he known that his grandson would some day stroll through the world murderously armed and in an officer’s uniform, the old man would have cursed his old age and the fruit of his loins. His own son, Dr. Demant’s father, the mid-level postal official, was already an abomination to the old man, though he lovingly tolerated him. The tavern, handed down from their forefathers, had to be left to his daughters and sons-in-law, while his male descendants were destined to remain officials, intellectuals, clerks, and muttonheads until the end of time. Until the end of time: but that did not fit! For the regimental surgeon had no children. Nor did he want any. You see, his wife—

At this point, Dr. Demant usually broke off his reminiscences. He thought about his mother: her life was one long frantic search for some kind of extra income. His father sits in the small coffeehouse after office hours. He plays tarot and loses and has to pay the check. He would like his son to complete four middle-school years and then work for the government—at the post office, of course. “You always aim high!” he says to the mother. However disorderly his life outside of work, he always
maintains a ludicrous order in all the props he has brought along from his army days. His uniform, the uniform of a full-term assistant paymaster, with the gold chevrons on the sleeves, the black trousers, and the infantry shako, hangs in the closet like a still surviving triparte person, with glistening buttons freshly polished once a week. Likewise cleaned once a week, the black, curving saber with the fluted hilt lies horizontal, held up by two nails, on the wall over the unused desk, a gold-yellow tassel dangling loosely, recalling a somewhat dusty sunflower in bud.

“If you hadn’t come along,” the father said to the mother, “I would have taken the exam and today I’d be a paymaster sergeant.”

On the Kaiser’s birthday, Postal Official Demant dons his government uniform with a crimson hat and a sword. On this day, he does not play tarot. Every year on the Kaiser’s birthday he resolves to get a new debt-free lease on life. So he gets drunk. And he comes home late at night, draws his sword in the kitchen, and bosses a whole regiment around. The pots are platoons, the teacups troops, and the plates companies. Simon Demant is a colonel, a colonel in the service of Franz Joseph I. The mother, in a lace nightcap, a voluminously pleated nightgown, and a small fluttering jacket, gets out of bed to calm her husband.

One day, a day after the Kaiser’s birthday, his father had a stroke in bed. He had a gentle death and a dazzling funeral. All the mailmen followed the coffin. And his image was lodged in the widow’s faithful memory: a model husband, who had died in the service of the Emperor and the Imperial and Royal Postal Service. The uniforms—Assistant Paymaster Demant’s and Postal Official Demant’s—still hung side by side in the closet, maintained in their constant radiance by his widow with the help of brush, camphor, and brass polish. The uniforms looked like mummies, and whenever the closet was opened, the son felt as if he were seeing two corpses of his departed father.

He wanted to be a doctor at any price. He gave lessons for a wretched six crowns a month. He wore ragged boots. Whenever it rained he left huge wet footprints on the fine waxed floors of the well-to-do. His footprints were bigger when the boot soles
were ragged. He finally obtained his secondary-school diploma. And he became a physician. But poverty still loomed before him, a black wall on which he shattered. He literally sank into the arms of the military. Seven years of food, seven years of drink, seven years of clothing, seven years of shelter: seven, seven long years! He became an army doctor. And he remained one. Life seemed to flow along more swiftly than thoughts. And before he even made a decision he was an old man.

And he had married Fräulein Eva Knopfmacher.

Here Regimental Surgeon Dr. Demant once again stemmed the flow of his memories. He headed home.

The evening had already begun; an unusually festive illumination poured from all the rooms. “The old gentleman is here,” the orderly announced. The “old gentleman”: that was his father-in-law, Herr Knopfmacher.

At that moment, he emerged from the bathroom in a long, downy, flowery dressing gown, holding a razor and sporting cheerfully reddened, freshly shaved, and fragrant cheeks that lay far apart. His face seemed to fall into two halves. It was held together only by the gray goatee.

“My dear Max!” said Herr Knopfmacher, gingerly placing his razor on a small table, spreading out his arms, and letting the dressing gown gape open. They embraced with two casual kisses and entered the study together. “I’d like a drink!” said Herr Knopfmacher.

Dr. Demant unlocked the cabinet, peered at several bottles for a while, then turned around. “I don’t know anything about liquor,” he said. “I don’t know what you drink.” He had arranged for a selection of alcohol, sort of like an uneducated man ordering a library.

“You still don’t drink?” said Herr Knopfmacher. “Do you have slivovitz, arrack, rum, brandy, gentian cordial, vodka?” he asked quickly, in a manner thoroughly inconsistent with his dignity. He rose. He walked over to the cabinet, the ends of his dressing gown flapping, and with a sure hand he pulled out a bottle from the lineup.

“I wanted to surprise Eva,” Herr Knopfmacher began. “And I must tell you right off, my dear Max, you were away all
afternoon. Instead of you…”—he paused, then repeated—“instead of you I found a lieutenant here. A dimwit.”

“He is the only friend,” Max Demant retorted, “that I have made since the start of my military service. He is Lieutenant Trotta, a fine man!”

“A fine man!” the father-in-law echoed. “Well, take me, I’m a fine man too! But I would not advise you to leave me alone with a pretty woman for an hour if you care for her even this much.” Knopfmacher joined the tips of his thumb and index finger and then repeated, after a while, “Even this much!”

The regimental surgeon blanched. He took off his glasses and polished them for a long time. He thereby enveloped his surroundings in a pleasant fog, in which his father-in-law in his dressing gown became a hazy albeit immense white splotch. Nor did Demant put his glasses back on when they were polished; instead, he held them and spoke into the fog.

“I have no grounds, dear Papá, for distrusting Eva or my friend.”

He said it falteringly, the regimental surgeon. Even to him it sounded like an utterly alien phrase, borrowed from some remote text, heard in some forgotten play.

He put on his glasses, and old Knopfmacher, now distinct in size and silhouette, promptly closed in on the doctor. Now even the phrase he had just used seemed very distant. It was certainly no longer true. The doctor was as well aware of that as his father-in-law.

“No grounds!” Herr Knopfmacher repeated. “But
I
have grounds! I know my daughter! You don’t know your wife! And I also know the lieutenants—and all men, for that matter. I’m not saying anything against the army. Let’s stick to the matter at hand. When my wife—your mother-in-law—was young, I had lots of opportunities to get to know young men—in mufti and in uniform. Yes, you’re a strange bunch, you… you… you… ”

He cast about for a generic term for some vague category that would include his son-in-law and other dimwits. He would have preferred to say “you academics!” For Herr Knopfmacher had become smart, prosperous, and respected without attending
a university. Indeed, he was about to receive the title of commercial councilor any day now. He spun out a delightful dream of the future, a dream of his charitable donations, huge donations. Their immediate consequence would be a tide. And if, say, you acquired Hungarian citizenship, you could become a nobleman all the sooner. In Budapest, they didn’t make life so hard on you. Incidentally, it was also academics who made life hard on you with all their abstract notions—those dimwits! His own son-in-law made things hard on him. If some minor scandal now erupted with the children, he could kiss the tide goodbye. You always have to look after things yourself, personally! You also have to watch out for the virtue of other men’s wives!

“My dear Max, I would like to put my cards on the table before it’s too late.”

The regimental surgeon did not care for that expression; he did not care for truth at any price. Ah, he knew his wife just as well as Herr Knopfmacher knew his daughter. But he loved her, he couldn’t help it. He loved her. In Olomouc there had been District Commissioner Herdall, in Graz, District Judge Lederer. So long as they weren’t fellow officers, the regimental surgeon thanked God and also his wife. If only he could leave the army. His life was in constant danger. How often had he geared himself up to suggest to his father-in-law …? He tried once again.